Known monitoring systems may capture and analyze web sessions. The captured web sessions can be replayed at a later time to identify problems in web applications and obtain website analytics. The monitoring systems may insert extensive instrumentation in the web application that log user session events, user actions, and webpage metadata (performance, etc). This style of logging might be performed by a client device, a server, or both.
Significant challenges may exist bringing together and replaying dispersed log files. The challenge from a replay perspective involves accurately stitching together the user experience from the log files obtained across multiple tiers. For example, some events may not be observable and therefore might not be captured during the web session. If events are not captured, the replayed web session may not reproduce the same states that occurred during the original web session. As a result, the replayed web session may not identify problems that happened during the original web session or may generate errors that never actually happened during the original web session.
The challenge from a physics perspective includes generating log files and moving the log files into a central repository without adversely affecting the original web session. Capturing and storing web session data uses client computer bandwidth and network bandwidth. The additional bandwidth usage might slow down the web session and cause the user to take evasive actions, such as aborting the web session.